Hunger.

The first writing challenge of this week has asked me to describe someone that has entered my life in the last year. I didn’t even have to ever interact with this little gem for him to set up camp in the back of my head, he was waiting to be released…

 

I was dunking chunks of airy white bread into the syrupy sauce of the Gambas Pil Pil when I first noticed him in my peripheral. The glossy orange oil stuck to the bread and was sucked up by each doughy hole, creating delectable bite after bite, but even my ravenous stomach could not concentrate on the starter once he had appeared on the terrace.

The sun had left the sky some hours ago, but the Spanish heat still lingered in the inky night time air. He had slumped at the head of his table, the elder of a jabbering local tribe; the villagers that dined late and chatted loudly for many moonlit hours.

Chubby grey eyebrows loomed above a pair of thick rimmed glasses. His appetite was magnified by the lenses, his perverted eyes undressing every woman in sight and devouring the menu as though the dishes were oozing their aromas in front of him. An off-white shirt grasped his arms as its only means of support, flapping otherwise across his torso and his neck, unbuttoned and casually thrown open in desire of a drop in body temperature. The cool down looked unlikely for the protruding stomach, as its organs were hidden beneath aeons of over indulgence. Wiry hairs coiled across his chest and clung to the body amid pools of moisture, whilst his thick tanned skin strained across his ballooning gut and gleamed under the starlight.

As my back strained from the white plastic patio chair, and the oily orange sauce dripped from my bread onto my pristine white beach dress, I pictured the reserved, clothed crowd that frequented the restaurants around my London abode. I decided it was perhaps time to go home. My local Spanish bistro did a decent paella…

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